Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Sun push the thread envelope

According to The Register the next iteration of Sun's Niagara chip will have 16-cores and 16 threads per core . Apart from the mind-boggling number of threads which will become available in an eight socket 1U rack, the licensing implications are a bit of a facer for Oracle. Soon a server with a single chip in it could incur a sixteen CPU license. At least at the moment if customers don't want to pay Oracle's multi-core fees they have the option to tear out some chips. But that's not an option with Niagara 3. Can Oracle seriously maintain a policy of selling licenses in bundles of sixteen?

In response to Laurent's comment, the 'per socket' definition for SE has apparently changed recently, as reported here:http://www.pythian.com/blogs/1009/recent-changes-to-oracle-se-licensing-rules-higher-price

It's more of a 'per chip' than 'per socket' or 'per processor' or 'per core'. It is too confusing for me.

About Me

I studied history at university but didn't want to stay in academia. After my finals I read "Neuromancer" by William Gibson and decided to try computing. Those were the days when a history graduate with no relevant experience could get a job in IT. Luckily, I had an aptitude. At school, one teacher had repeatedly told my class that history was a training in the gathering, analysis and presentation of data; we scoffed but he was right. Also I enjoyed programming COBOL. It was like being paid to solve crossword puzzles all day.

Since 1992 I have worked on Oracle database systems. Over that time I have worked as a data modeller, designer, developer and DBA. I have also undertaken assignments as a business analyst and a technical architect. If pushed, I would have to say I'm happiest writing PL/SQL programs. I am least happy when attempting to marry a normalised data model to the needs of an ORM tool.

I was made an Oracle ACE programme in 2003 . In the same year I won the Oracle Magazine OTN Contributor of the Year award.